If I should hae naething else, I will aye hae my wife
To comfort me in the mornin’.”
Need I say that the applause was loud, and long, and real?
“BLITHE AN’ MERRY WERE WE A’.”
Marriage trips, wedding tours, were not so common forty years ago as they are now: we had none. Shortly after my uncle’s song was finished, and with the glee it inspired still beaming in their faces, the guests went to our house. We were the last to leave, which we did under a shower of old shoes “for luck.” There was the usual gathering of noisy children round the bride’s door, waiting for the coppers scattered on such occasions; and as they scrambled for them, we got into the drosky, and were driven home, followed by an increasing number of children cheering in an intermittent way, all anxious to be in time for the “scatterin’ o’ the ha’pennies,” which had to be repeated at the bridegroom’s door. There was an outer circle of grown-up people, who showed their goodwill by a welcoming cheer. As Agnes crossed her threshold, my oldest sister, who had come to “receive” her, allowed an oat cake to fall on the young wife’s head; and the younger folks scrambled for the bits, as these had some not very clearly defined faculty of foretelling their future luck, especially if confirmed by a dream over the bridescake. Agnes was placed by the matrons present at the head of the supper table, and thereby installed as mistress of the house. After supper there were games, in which the elderly folks joined, the older men with demonstrative glee. The more matronly matrons required a good deal of pressing—their “play days were bye;” but most of them went through a short game, others kept remonstrating with the old men, especially their own husbands, who were oftener up, and who even when looking on capered and “hooched” (i.e. shouted merrily):—“Tammas, Tammas! ye’re forgettin’ yersel’;”—“Stop that auld man o’ mine; he’ll hurt himsel’;”—“Oh man, James, ye’re ower auld for sic nonsense. Let the young folks carry on the games noo.”
After the first round of games, in which all the guests—old and young—took part, and the seniors had shown their skill, these mostly settled to be spectators, all the while enjoying the frolics of the young folk as much as their own canty cracks, whilst the younger portion had the carrying on of the fun, which they did right merrily. Old Scotch songs were sung, and kindly sentiments uttered, as those will readily believe whose memory can recall the homely convivialities of forty or fifty years ago. My uncle was pressed by old and young to sing another song like “The Frostit Corn,”—“one we did not hear every day,”—“a real country-fireside song.” He said he “would gie ane; it was no’ as gude as ‘The Frostit Corn.’ It was ca’d ‘The Country Rockin’.’ But maist o’ ye’ll no’ ken what a rockin’ is. It’s a gatherin’ o’ neebors for a night’s diversion. The women brang their ‘rocks’—things for spinning woo’ or lint wi’, an’ birled an’ span an’ crackit awa’. I’ve seen them hunders o’ times in my young days, but there’s no sic a thing noo as ‘the rock and the wee pickle tow.’ Mind it’s hamespun an’ countrified.” Then he began:—
THE COUNTRY ROCKIN’.
“It has often been alloo’d that the best o’ human life
Is the hours o’ social harmony when free from party strife,
When freendship smiles and love beguiles ’mang lads an’ lasses kindly jokin’;